News

The hats, the lorry, the rifles... every clue said the pictures were fakes

It was never the clear-cut scoop that the Daily Mirror had hoped for. From the moment its pictures of the alleged torture of an Iraqi detainee were published, there were serious doubts about their authenticity, writes Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas.

The sharply focused black-and-white pictures had all the hallmarks of a clinical and carefully staged photo shoot rather than of a smudged series of snaps that a squaddie might take in the midst of the action.

There were none of the smirking faces and salutations that are usually seen on trophy photographs. The soldiers’ uniforms looked crisp and clean; even the detainee’s silky-looking shirt was unmarked, despite the allegation that he had been tortured for hours.

More seriously for Piers Morgan, the editor, there was evidence that equipment in the photographs had never been to Iraq. The SA80 Mark 1 weapon and the Bedford truck in the pictures were not used in